Sunday, April 11, 2010

What I Loved About Yesterday's Catch

I was in the car on the way to Brookside Gardens when Willie made the game-winning catch in yesterday's game. I still haven't seen the catch, but I've got a pretty good idea of what it looks like in my mind... nothing quite like baseball on the radio. (At least when it's not a pancake digression, and you already have an idea what the score is...)

What I loved about it though was not Chuck's "He made the catch!" shtick, but the ambient noises behind him.

Crack! The ball is struck

OOOOH!!! YES!!!!! goes the crowd as it takes off

OOOOOOHHHH!!! as they see Willie's charging for it.

Unnnnnnngggggghhhh!!!! as they see he's got it

Then back to an OooooooooooAaaaaaaaah right after he catches it.

In the space of about 2.5 seconds, there's about 3 distinct emotions coming from the crowd, relayed through nothing but sound.

But that wasn't even the best part. It's what came next. That murmur. That sound of 17,000 simultaneous conversations all saying variants of "I can't believe that!" or "so close!" or phrases much more colorful.

While Chuck and Dave did their little pre-commercial wrapup, that murmur continued. And continued. And continued. There's nothing like that sound. It's probably the same sound I was making in my car. The same sound a few thousand people also listening on the radio were making. What the hell just happened? That's what I love about baseball.

3 Comments:

I enjoyed that, too, but I also went back to the video a few times, trying to catch the video of the Mets fans reacting as they made those sounds. There was a very small snippet of video showing the crowd behind a very lucky and happy Matt Capps. The predominant stance in the field was two hands on top of the head, hands that seconds ago had been raised in anticipated triumph.